Remember When

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Went to a 50th birthday party over the weekend.

J.C. is nearly there.

Had a great time seeing old friends...

...and I mean old friends.

The kid who had the party was at my 5th birthday party...so the type of party has changed a little bit.

Just a little bit.

We went from birthday cake and ice cream to wild beer-filled parties to...

...the party on Saturday night.

I had a few beers.

Something I rarely do.

We played Family Feud.

(And I let my buddy's sister win because I'm a nice guy).

At 9:20 I yawned mightily...not because the company wasn't great but because it felt like it was 2 in the morning.

We had cake.

And the stories started flowing...

"Remember when this idiot..."

All of the greatest hits came falling out of the closet.

"We were lucky we didn't get killed..."

We put a lot of those stories into the context of our parents and then our own children.

And the people we'd lost along the way.

It's strange, but people who were not in the room were definitely in the room.

We told stories about a buddy who struck a deer while test-driving a sports car.

We laughed about my brother Jeff doing about twenty different things.

We talked about John's Dad and my Dad.

We toasted one another...

...and we toasted all of those birthdays that have passed.

And it certainly occurred to me...

...we weren't just telling stories...

We were still living our lives.

I stopped yawning.

My beautiful wife (who was working a couple of long shifts back-to-back) called me:

"What're you doing? It's nearly 11 o'clock!"

"Laughing," I said.

Some of the talk was about what we're going to do when we stop working so hard.

I'd be okay with doing a lot of what we all did on Saturday night...

...old friends...a couple of drinks...

...and inviting friends who couldn't make it...

...right into the room with us.

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